We will try to answer the this two common questions that often arise in discussion:

“What is wrong with pictures with sexy women in sexy poses?”

“What is wrong with pictures of submissive and passive women? And dominant and active men?”

The answer to these questions is that the problem isn’t sexiness, nor is the submissiveness, dominance, passivity or activity. The description becomes sexist when the traits is predominately applied to one gender.

Let’s turn to our hypothetical example of the fantasy game “Wyrms and Warriors”.

How do characters look?

Role-playing games are often about wish fulfilment. We want cool characters, we want them to look cool. So let’s look at the pictures. Perhaps the male characters look something like this:

Looks pretty cool to me. If I want to create a character I have a lot of different looks for character can inspire me. I can be inspired to play beautiful characters or ugly characters and a lot of other cool looks.

Wow. My cup size can vary! I feel inspired! Or… Perhaps not. While many of the male characters type was attractive in different ways, there was a lot more variation to them the size of the bulge between their legs. The different looks and body types expressed something about the character.

What about that passive/active, dominant/submissive, and sexualised/non-sexualised images of men and women?

Here’s the thing. There is more to images of characters then clothes and body type. It’s about their attitude, situation and pose too. Let me try to explain.

Active/PassiveActive: Someone who is active in the picture is doing something, making something happen.Passive: Someone who is passive in the picture isn’t doing much. They might just be standing, sitting or laying about.

Dominant/SubmissiveDominant: The one that dominates in the picture is the one who is in charge, or has control and power, or is self assured and look to be in control.Submissive: The one that is submissive in the picture, is the one that doesn’t have power, or has less power and is vulnerable, or insecure or at a disadvantage.

Sexualised/Non-sexualisedSexualised: If someone in the picture is shown in sexualised way they try to hint at sex in some way. They can be posed in way that focus on sexy body parts, or be undressed, or show sexual cues like hard nipples or hinting of an erect penis.Non-sexualised: If someone is shown in a nonsexual way they are simply shown in a way that doesn’t try to hint at sex, be sexy or show sexual cues.

While nothing is wrong with any of this things on their own, they are often expressed in a sexist pattern. Men are more often active, dominate, and non-sexualised in images and women are more often passive, submissive and sexualised.

An example would be that there are more images of brave, powerful male knights fighting a monster to save the the weak, submissive but sexy princess then the opposite with female knights and princes.

It’s pretty boring if everything fall into that pattern. It’s also an easy trap to fall into. Mix it up. Let men be sexy, and let women be active sometimes. Let the prince be the one that needs saving sometimes, and the dominating monster be female.

How to fix it?

Count the images. If 60% of the men in the pictures are active, let 60% of the women in the pictures be active. If 30% of the women are submissive, have 30% of the men be submissive. If 50% of the images of men are non-sexualised, have 50% of the images of women be non-sexualised.

Assuming that you can count, it is pretty easy.

Closing words

As you can see, this discussion isn’t about banning things. It is about variation, not just for the guys, not just for the girls, but for everyone.

Paizo Publishing and Pathfinder – On Art I recently had the opportunity to speak with creators of the Pathfinder RPG at Paizo Publishing, James Jacobs (Creative Director) and F. Wesley Schneider (Editor-in-Chief). The subjects at hand were:...